[boost] Re: [filesystem] Major changes before standardization

From: Bruno Martínez Aguerre (br1_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-11 15:58:20

Peter Dimov wrote:

> Beman Dawes wrote:
>> The critical technical change required is internationalization. The
>> plan is to provide a templated basic_path class, with typedefs for
>> path and wpath. In other words, an approach very similar to the current
>> std::basic_string, std::string, and std::wstring.
>>
>> Doing this adds a certain amount of complexity compared to the
>> current path class. For example, a path_traits class has to be
>> introduced to give basic_paths on user defined types a way to import
>> the conversions, delimiters, and other traits.
>
> If your basic_path takes a path_traits parameter - which means that  
> you're, in fact, misnaming a policy class as 'path_traits' - this is  
> likely to create basic_string-ish problems further down the path.
>
> In addition, basic_path on user-defined types simply doesn't make sense  
> (to me at least), because the user can't just define his own path class.  
> The set of supported paths is determined by the capabilities of the  
> underlying filesystem layer. In particular, the user cannot define the  
> conversions between the different path types, because they are  
> implementation defined.

It does make sense to me.  You could build an archive file yourself and  
use Boost.Filesystem to navigate it.

Bruno Martínez